Prosecutor Investigates Legality of Tape in Political Ad

The political campaign in Burlington County (Penn.) heated up after a video appeared on the Internet that included a snippet of logging tape from a 911 call, intended to draw attention to the merger of the Cinnaminson comm center with the county.

In the video, a segment of the audio is played repeatedly, giving the impression that the calltaker is completely clueless about the location the 911 caller is reporting. Officials said the call is authentic, but complained that the audio was manipulated to make it sound like the call was mishandled.

County Freeholder Jim Wujcik requested that county prosecutor Robert Bernardi open an investigation to determine if any laws were broken by use of the audio. Bernardi agreed to study the situation.

Wujcik believes the video was intentionally edited to mislead and undermine public confidence in the Burlington County Central Communications. He said the editing might constitute a violation of state law forbidding the alteration of public records.

Bernardi responded to Wujcik, saying, “Our office will initiate a review of this matter to determine whether or not there was any criminal conduct in the alleged alteration of the recorded call.”

The origin of the three-minute video is in question—no on has claimed to have produce it, and it was posted on YouTube with a pseudonym, hiding the identity of the poster.

Comm center officials say the call is one that was taken in August, about two weeks after the county took over dispatching for Cinnaminson.

In the video, a caller reports an elderly resident walking on the street and who might be in danger. But the dispatcher apparently doesn’t recognize the streets, and repeatedly asks the caller for a better location. At one point the dispatcher tells the caller that the street doesn’t exist.

The remainder of the video criticizes Cinnaminson mayor William Young and township committeeman Anthony Minniti for voting to move dispatching services to the county.
The video appears to have links to the county’s Democratic party, and Democratic township committee candidate Linda Lamb admitted that she obtained the call recording through an Open Public Records Act request.

But she denied knowing who made the video. She did say she did not support moving dispatching services to the county.

Leaders of the union that represents dispatchers and other county employees were angry about the controversy. “We don’t like that our members are being used as a ping-pong ball in a political fight,” said John Lazzaroti, assistant to the president of CWA Local 1034.